Film of the Week: Venom

It would be unnecessary for me to tell you the rollercoaster ride of a story that’s the production of Venom, and the infamous performance in Spider-Man 3, which as a film in its entirety does have some redeeming qualities and will defend to this day and have done so in a previous post on this blog, but that’s a different topic. I will even agree that Venom’s portrayal could have been better, and considering the bumpy ride that throughout this film’s development, I was hesitant to say I was looking forward to this film, even less so when it unintentionally felt to me as if they were only making this film as a way for Sony to keep the rights of Venom to themselves, since the deal they made with Marvel to allow Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There was a brief spout of news labelling this film as a cash grab for Sony, a desperate move to keep its property because superhero films are exploding all over the box office, year in, year out.

I am pleased to note my hesitancy and expectations of this film to be a rushed project were in vain. It’s a genuinely good film. Sony did a good job improving upon their mistakes in Spider-Man 3. Tom Hardy’s spectacular performance was vastly different to the Eddie we saw way back when. Tom Hardy does an amazing job at character acting, and so was the perfect job to play a character whose mind is constantly being overtaken by an alien.

We also get to see a visual improvement with Venom’s appearance as well. Of course, that can be due to technology’s improvements over the years between films, but Venom’s overall look is certainly powerful, and does do justification for the comic book character.

The filmmakers played it safe and basically gave us what we wanted, which was not wasting any of our time. It did take nearly an hour before we finally got to see Venom’s true form, but that past hour was full of necessary scenes, including introducing the main characters, setting up our villain, establishing how the symbiote arrived on Earth, and Eddie’s will of taking down a maniac who is conducting immoral experiments by using humans to be infected with the other symbiotes to find the perfect host. And of course, the main villain, Carlton Drake, is one of those perfect hosts, and becomes one for Riot. Although it should be noted that those two villains do feature on their own instead of becoming one, so that was one change they decided to make, but it does work.

The climactic battle between the two symbiotes, Venom and Riot is a visual masterpiece, and shows their true powers and their hosts’ struggles as they fight for the world. I am glad they decided to include other symbiotes in the film, even if it does feature that scene where essentially two of the same are battling it out, as previously seen in multiple Marvel Cinematic Universe films. But, I am pleased to note, despite the easiness to criticise this film and compare it to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it would be for unjustifiable reasons, because it is a standalone film. Sony is attempting to launch their own cinematic universe, following pretty much every other film studio since Marvel showed them how it should be done. I have absolutely no problems with Sony starting their own universe, if they do it correctly.

I had no problem with Universal starting their Dark Universe, featuring many mythical beasts from famous stories, but The Mummy was a terrible way to start, purely because they rushed it so much, tried to introduce too many elements and characters in one film instead of focusing on one character at a time with only a few references here and there to the latter. Venom did exactly what Marvel proved does work, and for that I sincerely wish them luck for the future – if they can remain patient and don’t ruin it by rushing.

Let’s hope whatever film Sony decides to release in the future is as good or better than Venom, and Venom was an amazing film.

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)